Prosecutor fights ex-Mount Olive cop's quest to withdraw guilty plea

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William Westhoven

MORRISTOWN - The Morris County Prosecutor's Office is opposing an effort by former Mount Olive Police Officer Ryan Eastridge to withdraw the guilty plea he entered in 2014 to obstruction of justice, calling it a case of "buyer's remorse" that fails to acknowledge the benefit of the plea bargain he received.

Superior Court Judge Salem Vincent Ahto, sitting in Morristown, is slated to hear arguments on Thursday in Morristown on whether Eastridge, now 31, should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea or whether he has made a case for the plea to be set aside on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel in 2014.

Defense attorney Edward Bilinkas, who frequently represents police officers and other high-profile defendants, negotiated a plea agreement with the Prosecutor's Office in 2014 for Eastridge to admit to a disorderly persons offense of obstruction of the administration of law. In exchange, the Prosecutor's Office declined to pursue a charge of official misconduct but mandated that Eastridge forfeit his police officer's position in Mount Olive and never seek a law enforcement job again.

Eastridge has the support of several Police Benevolent Associations, former state Assemblyman Richard Kamin, R-Mount Olive, township Mayor Robert Greenbaum and former Police Chief Mark Spitzer. After leaving the police department, Eastridge was quickly hired by the Mount Olive Department of Public Works. His plea did not require him to forfeit pursuit of all public sector jobs, only those in law enforcement.

Assistant Prosecutor John McNamara Jr., who filed two legal briefs with Ahto in support of the office's opposition to Eastridge's efforts, wrote that new counsel Lee Vartan has disingenuously tried to use McNamara's words against him by referring to his statements at plea time that the office believed Eastridge didn't have a sinister intent to break the law.

McNamara said that state and case law requires job forfeiture even on disorderly persons offenses if the underlying conduct involves or touches on the public office. The Prosecutor's Office did not require that Eastridge be barred from all public employment, McNamara said, and its handling did not amount to "prosecutorial excess" as Vartan has charged.

"At the behest of defense counsel (Bilinkas in 2014), the state sought to limit that result, after principled consideration of the equities, as stated at the time of the plea, by advocating for a limited forfeiture," McNamara wrote. "The fact the state had to advocate on behalf of the defendant is the result of the statutory text that requires the state to make such an application on behalf of a defendant. (N.J.S.A. 2C:51-2e). Yet defendant now tries to put an unfair gloss on the state's arguments at the time of the sentence, which was intertwined with the civil remedy of forfeiture, by claiming the state prosecuted an innocent man."

"Defendant is not an innocent man. He was properly convicted upon his knowing and voluntary plea, and a lawful sentence was imposed," McNamara wrote. "Defendant accepted the benefits attached to his plea and avoided harsher sanctions and the cost and expense of a trial. The state received the benefit of a resolution, and now the benefit of finality. The defendant should be required to abide by the bargain."

In his written brief, McNamara also supplied the most public explanation to date of how Eastridge in 2014 tapped into the state's National Crime Information Center database for law enforcement on three occasions between March 15 and May 2, 2014 - via an InfoCop program - to do a favor for a neighbor in Warren County who was wondering if an arrest warrant had been issued for one of his landscaping company employees.

Eastridge's crime, according to the Prosecutor's Office, was that he ultimately did find in May 2014, via InfoCop that connected him to NCIC, that an arrest warrant for aggravated sexual assault was pending against the employee, identified as Byron Bonilla-Aguaguina. Eastridge contends he only told his neighbor that there was an active warrant out for the employee but not the nature of the alleged first-degree crimes.

Eastridge's neighbor then alerted the worker and on May 4, 2014, he drove Bonilla-Aguaguina to a Greyhound bus station where the suspect boarded a bus bound for San Diego. At the same time, police had learned of the exchanges between Eastridge and his neighbor, and they were able to identify the bus that Bonilla-Aguaguina was on and stopped it in Kansas. Bonilla-Aguaguina eventually was extradited from Kansas, was indicted for aggravated sexual assault of two children, and is now pending trial in Warren County, according to McNamara's brief.

By providing the warrant information to his neighbor, even as a favor, Eastridge did not have a legitimate law enforcement purpose in doing so and never told superiors that he was in contact with his neighbor about the wanted suspect, McNamara wrote. At the time, Eastridge was on loan as a police officer to a heroin interdiction task force operating in Passaic County.

"In reality, during the time frame when Eastridge was doing the checks at (the neighbor's request), Bonilla-Aguaguina was the subject of a sexual assault investigation being conducted by the Hackettstown Police Department and the Warren County Prosecutor's Office that had been ongoing since at least February of 2014," McNamara wrote. The information about the warrant, entered into NCIC on Apr. 15, 2014, was not publicly available, McNamara wrote.

Plea negotiations were pursued and an agreement was struck in July 2014 under which Eastridge admitted to committing obstruction of the administration of law by accessing the InfoCop site that revealed a warrant for Bonilla-Aguaguina that Eastridge conveyed to the defendant's employer. Eastridge plead guilty before Superior Court Judge Stuart Minkowitz in July 2014, agreed to forfeit his police job and never pursue another law enforcement job, and paid a $625 fine.

McNamara also said in one brief that Eastridge has not filed a sworn certification that states he did not enter his plea voluntarily and was not pressured or coerced into pleading. McNamara noted that Eastridge was questioned at length by Judge Minkowitz in July 2014 and said he was pleading guilty voluntarily and had enough time to consult with his lawyer about the terms and conditions. Eastridge said he knew there was not a legitimate law enforcement purpose in his actions, according to a transcript of his plea.

"No legitimate law enforcement purpose was furthered by the dissemination of the information," McNamara wrote. "In fact, no effort was made by defendant to give the information to authorized sources which he, if you believe his characterization that it was consistent with his friendly nature to commit such an act of beneficence, so nonchalantly provided to a private person. The unlawfulness of such actions is evident. The absence of malice, or dearth of sinister intention, goes to quantum of moral culpability. It does not detract one iota from the basic unlawfulness of defendant's choice to act as he did."

"Buyer's remorse is not a principled basis to vacate the plea," McNamara wrote of Eastridge, who had been a Mount Olive officer for seven years before he forfeited the job.

Vartan, a former U.S. assistant prosecutor for New Jersey and former state executive assistant attorney general, has contended that Eastridge made an innocent mistake for misguided friendship reasons with his neighbor and had no unlawful intent when he passed on the warrant information. He also stated in his legal brief that Eastridge plead out of pressure under the threat of being prosecuted for official misconduct, which carries a punishment of five years in prison upon conviction.

If the judge allows Eastridge to withdraw his guilty plea, the charge of obstructing the administration of law could be revived and the Prosecutor's Office also could seek an indictment from a Morris County grand jury for official misconduct. Vartan, who agrees that Eastridge acted improperly but is being too harshly treated, said he is hopeful that plea negotiations could begin anew and that job forfeiture would not be recommended.

Convincing a judge that defense counsel was ineffective is harder, with a requirement of a showing by the defendant that he was misled or not fully advised of all the consequences of a plea or that the result would have been different had he gone to trial.

In addition to trying to withdraw his guilty plea, Eastridge is in the process of filing an application with the state Parole Board for a pardon, or executive clemency, from Gov. Chris Christie. If a pardon is granted, the effect would be as though charges were never brought against Eastridge and he would be free to seek reinstatement at the Mount Olive Police Department or find another law enforcement job.